A godawful small affair
by Soroka
Summary: A year after returning from Cairo, Jotaro cannot shake the persistent feeling that something is not right. It takes a rainy evening, a talkative classmate and an unfinished videogame to make it grow into full-blown paranoia.
1. Chapter 1

_If I lay here_, _if I just lay here_  
_Would you lie with me and just forget the world?_

_\- Snow Patrol, Chasing Cars_

Jotaro had never been a fan of videogames.

He had received a shiny new NES as an ill-thought-out present from his father on his sixteen's birthday but it had never interested him much. He owned two games in total, both of them gifts from classmates who seemed to be eager to get rid of them and he had played each only once. There was a pinball simulator that he had found incredibly stupid from the get-go and a racing game that only made him want to learn to drive for real. Occasionally, a bright-colored case of a new title would catch his eye but he never stopped to look at it twice. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing was a waste of time anyway.

Kakyoin was different.

His eyes lit up like fireworks whenever his hands closed around the plastic controller and somehow, that made all the difference in the world. His unbridled enthusiasm was contagious, as Jotaro's second gamepad attested, and even though he lost to him ninety percent of the time, it all felt worth it. The game came alive in his classmate's hands, no longer stumbling clumsily through stages and progressing at a snail pace like it did in his own. Sometimes, he felt like he would buy every game in Japan if he could just sit next to him and watch him play.

He found himself doing just that on a dark, gloomy evening with the rain drumming irregularly against the windowpanes. The dense clouds blocked the dim light of the autumn sun, leaving the large living room flooded by grey shadows. He lay spread out on the couch, a can of cheap soda in his hand while, one level below him, the large television screen cast multicolored reflections on Kakyoin's face. The redhead sat on the wooden floor, knees drawn up to his chest, face creased in deep concentration. His thumbs flew over the buttons in short quick motions for a while before devolving into a desperate irregular rhythm, like a dying man's heartbeat. Jotaro saw him bite the inside of his cheek, a clear sign that things were not going according to plan. Sure enough, a few seconds later, he saw his character freeze in place and emit a pained scream before crumpling to the ground and slowly blinking out of existence.

Kakyoin clicked his tongue in disappointment and let the controller rest on his knees. "Damn it, so close…"

Jotaro sipped his drink, watching the words _Game Over_ written in pixelated blood slide down the screen. "What happened?"

Kakyoin threw his head back, catching Jotaro's eyes in the half light. "Time limit; you only have two minutes to run out of this building before the monster catches up with you. You really have to memorize the map well or you're done for."

Jotaro shrugged and drew up his legs, leaving free space on the couch. "Why would I need to? I have you for that."

Kakyoin laughed and climbed up, accepting his silent invitation. "This is your game, you know? It was your birthday present and I feel like I've played it more than you."

Jotaro nodded quietly as behind him, Star Platinum's fingers crushed the empty can into a neat tin ball. The fragile plastic cartridge had appeared on his desk on the last day of spring, wrapped in discreet blue gift paper. Jotaro had no doubts about who it was from though the reason for the gift took some time to catch up with him. His actual birthday had come and gone while they were still in Egypt, but amidst killer Stand users, dangerous weather and his grandfather's flying skills, there were more important things to worry about. His coming of age had gone ignored even by himself so he assumed that it was his nosy mother who had tipped Kakyoin off. His classmate's explanation had been a nonchalant "better late than never" so Jotaro just shrugged and stuffed the cartridge into his pocket without a second thought. It was only when he got home that day that he realized that he, in turn, had no idea when Kakyoin's birthday was. For all he knew, it had been forgotten in Egypt too.

He saw Hierophant Green materialize to his left, pick up the controller and hand it to its master. Kakyoin turned it around in his hands for a while before looking up a Jotaro. "You're sure you don't want to have a go? I've been hogging this thing all evening."

He shook his head. "Knock yourself out. I just want to see how it ends."

Kakyoin let out a long sigh and leaned back waiting for the game title to roll into the screen. "Some people find the ending more rewarding if they get to it themselves".

Jotaro rolled his eyes at the subtle jab. Before meeting Kakyoin, he wasn't even aware of genres in videogames but after he began paying closer attention, he found himself enjoying the ones with complex plots and storylines. Being good at them was a whole other story and since getting good implied actual effort, he usually ended up dropping them until one of those days rolled around when he had nothing to do, the house was empty and Star Platinum's company was not enough.

He let his gaze drift towards the flickering screen. "I'm not those people."

"Yeah, you're lazier." A brief smirk danced on Kakyoin's lips before they pressed into a tight line as his hands clasped the controller. "It probably ends the way it's supposed to. They kill the evil wizard, escape the island and live happily ever after. Except for Yuki, that is."

Jotaro stretched his arms and reached for another can. "Which one was Yuki?"

Kakyoin hovered the cursor over an intricate sprite with a white and blue color scheme. "She's the healer girl with the magic staff; I read some spoilers in a gaming magazine and apparently she sacrifices herself for you and the others right before the ending."

He turned away with a frown, tapping the buttons frenetically while his character glided through the stage, barely keeping ahead of a giant hulking monster. Jotaro watched him in silence, trying to ignore the sudden hollow feeling settling in his stomach. He treated the game like a long, interactive movie that he only came back to every once in a while so his memories of it were a bit muddled. However, he did remember the healer character and her story arc better than the others and for a second, he felt a sting of pity for her. From what he could gather from her dialogues, she had led a somewhat sheltered life and had always been on the fence about her value to the team. Surviving the haunted island, would have probably honed her skills and made her stronger in the long term.

Then again, it would take her a while to chase the nightmares away. Nearly a year of ordinary high school life hadn't managed to do that for him.

He ripped out the tab so hard he almost took off the top of the can. "That's disappointing."

Kakyoin threw him a quick glance as his lips spread in a wide grin. "I thought you'd like her, she's kind of a fandom darling. Some people were so upset about her death they even tried to hack the game to re-code that part and give her a proper exit from the story."

Jotaro did not reply, instead pretending to follow the colorful action on the screen. There were times when he didn't understand half of the words that came out of Kakyoin's mouth, especially when he slipped into topics like videogames or movies or anything remotely similar. He lived in a world where people took those things way too seriously and obsessed over them way too much. Sure, he enjoyed movies and books as much as the next person but it had never occurred to him to think about them twice. They filled up an afternoon of his life and there was nothing more to it, not even a shred of that emotional attachment that sometimes made his mother bawl her eyes out at a heartfelt kiss or at a particularly gut-wrenching death scene. Those moments always made his skin crawl with second hand embarrassment. Surely, his mother understood that those were figments of other people's imaginations, not worth wasting her tears over.

Except that here he was, uncomfortably close to genuine sadness over a bunch of cleverly organized pixels. Life had gotten needlessly complicated in the last couple of months.

He saw the main character dash through a large door, slamming it on the monster's claws. As the next stage flashed up before him, Kakyoin quickly sipped his forgotten drink and went on. "Still, that's why the creators threw her fans a bone in the second edition. If you replay the game in Hard Mode, there's a special item in your inventory that you acquire in act three. If you keep it through the entire game and don't let it get destroyed, she survives and rejoins your party later."

Jotaro remained silent, his eyes locked on the main character's sprite fending off hordes of enemies swarming around it in a green and black blur. "Hard Mode?" he replied eventually.

If Kakyoin had picked up on his disheartened tone, his face did not reflect any of it. "Makes you earn your happy ending, I guess." he said before slamming the pause button to slide down to the floor again. "It's a pity that the sequel scrapped that and declared that the True Ending is the one where she dies after all."

Jotaro shrugged, resting his chin on his fist. "So what? I wasn't planning on playing it."

Kakyoin just smiled and turned back to the frozen screen where a dismembered zombie hand clawed at the main character from below. "You're not really playing this one either."


	2. Chapter 2

_Every day I wake up and it's Sunday._  
_Whatever's in my head won't go away._  
_The radio is playing all the usual._  
_And what's a wonderwall anyway?_

_\- Travis, Writing To Reach You_

The cold November wind chilled Jotaro to the bone as he walked out of the school through a crowd of teenagers that parted around him like the sea before a ship's prow. Occasionally he would hear a girl's voice calling his name breathlessly through a choir of screaming voices and the sound never failed to make him sigh in frustration. Fridays were usually the days when his female classmates would insist he'd join them for a drink on town and today was no exception. Jotaro thought they would take the hint after three years of curt refusals but their interest in him seemed to have increased after his fifty-day disappearance. He had come back with a couple of bruises, a broken arm and a profound lack of interest to answer questions which had kept them mostly at bay. Still, there were days when the question surfaced in the eyes of a curious classmate and immediately sank like a stone when they were met with his expression. He hoped that their impending graduation would make them forget about it and focus on something else for a change.

Maybe then he'd finally manage to forget about it himself.

He slowed down, waiting for the rushing crowd to leave him behind until he was alone in the schoolyard. The wind had picked up unexpectedly, tugging at his coat and nearly snatching his hat off his uncombed hair. He pulled it over his eyes, fighting to overcome a persistent uneasiness that had been sitting at the back of his mind for the entire day. He would never admit it to anyone but there were days when Star Platinum's presence became a real nuisance. The stand seemed to have a consciousness of its own and, though limited, it was aware enough to pick up on insignificant details Jotaro's mind would usually filter out. That facet had been extremely useful in Egypt with an enemy stand always ready to attack but here in Japan, it was more a distraction than anything else. It felt like having an extra pair of eyes on the back of his head that were always vigilant and clinically paranoid.

Hierophant Green's presence seemed to calm it down though. Maybe it felt like if there was another stand around keeping watch, things were less likely to go awry.

The thought made him stop in his tracks and turn towards the school building. Hierophant's master was supposed to meet him outside after classes but unlike him, he always seemed to have a reason to linger in the classroom. By now, Jotaro had come to expect it. He used to be the last one to leave way back in spring when he still was in a wheelchair and his face had that pale, sunken look that only people who have had a close brush with death could bear. Being in different classes, he hadn't had the chance to hear Kakyoin's explanation for their unannounced departure but the state he had been in back then was probably enough of a deterrent for anyone willing to push the issue. When he finally ditched the wheelchair and moved on to crutches, Jotaro had been sure that he was going to break in half.

He shrugged and began to retread his steps to the front door, turning up his coat collar against the biting wind. His eyes drifted unconsciously towards the long stairs carved in white stone behind the school. Looking at those bone-white stairs gave him an eerie feeling, like he was staring at a past that did not recognize its future. He had fallen all the way down those nearly, no, exactly a year ago, struck down by the same stand user he was waiting for now. Their meeting had marked the beginning of a lot of unpleasant events yet there were times when they both looked back upon those days with genuine nostalgia. Despite that, Kakyoin's smile had wavered more than once at the mention of Abdul and Iggy and he himself had found his stomach flip-flopping at the memory of them. The same sinking feeling had returned to haunt him today from the moment he realized what day it actually was. Anniversaries made him uneasy; they never felt like a new beginning but like the end of an era.

He shuddered as a gust of freezing wind enveloped him whole. At the corner of his eye the world grayed out and stirred ever so slightly.

As if in response to his quickly derailing train of thought, Star Platinum loomed at the back of his mind only to be abruptly suppressed. Cursing at his stand's restlessness, Jotaro cracked his neck loudly and walked up to a beat-up vending machine leaning against the brick wall of the school. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between all the students to kick the thing at least once so it was covered in dents and paint peeled off here and there. He slid out a five hundred yen bill from his wallet and pushed it through the slot absentmindedly.

The machine began dutifully whirring, brewing hot lemon tea. It got a couple of seconds into the process before it sputtered and coughed, its internal mechanism clanging in despair. Eventually, it shook in place and came to a complete stop. Jotaro sighed and did his duty as a student slamming his foot against the machine as hard as he could. It quivered pitifully again disturbing the gravel it stood on and spit out the money.

Something white peeked from underneath the bill.

He reached for the crumpled paper but found it firmly stuck between the gears. He pulled at it, gently at first but the machine was not about to give it back after the kick. Tired of fumbling around, Jotaro let out a frustrated groan and ripped it out.

The bill came out fine, though slightly damaged at the edges. With a frown, he stuffed it into his pocket and focused on the thing that had cost him his tea. A strip of paper lay on the ground, torn awkwardly in half and stained by machine oil. There seemed to be something written on it and when Jotaro picked it up, he recognized his own handwriting.

_I, Jotaro Kujo will wager my friend, Noriaki Kakyoin's soul, and offer it if I lose._

For a second, he could not breathe.

He stared at the mangled IOU in a daze, surprised at his own sudden distress as his hands became moist with sweat. He ran his fingers over the shoddily-written kanji, noticing for the first time how the pen had almost ripped through the paper when he had signed his name. It had probably been in his wallet for months and it just had to reappear today of all days.

The school at the edge of his vision turned a darker shade of gray.

Something cold and hollow swelled up in his chest, his heart beating against his ribs like a trapped animal. He stood still for a while, clutching the ripped piece of paper as his mind tried furiously to catch up with the sudden, paralyzing dread overwhelming it. Somewhere deep within, common sense rose up to tell him that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. He had simply put the paper in his wallet after their fight against Daniel D'Arby and it had remained there until he accidentally pushed it into the slot along with the bill. It had outlived its intended purpose long ago, in fact, he was sure he had gotten rid of it that same day after the wretched game of poker came to an end. If that was true he didn't remember. He could not remember anything clearly anymore except the multicolored glow of the television screen reflected in Kakyoin's eyes and how much he wanted to see it again.

Did today count as Act Four?

The treacherous thought was almost followed by a shaky fit of laughter. It made no sense, none of the thoughts that were running through his head made any sense but the cold hand gripping at his insides was definitely real. Inside him Star Platinum tensed up like a bowstring, an action that was usually followed by a vicious hurricane of punches but there was nothing to attack here. Instead, he heard his stand emit a long, low hum as the world around him dimmed and flickered.

Time had resumed.

For a second, Dio's smug grin floated in his mind's eye. He shook his head, chasing the image away and looked around but things seemed perfectly normal. A pigeon was pecking at crumbs on the ground, branches swayed in the wind, time went on but Jotaro's mind had crashed to a stop as he finally recognized the hollow, queasy sensation. He had experienced it before, what felt like an eternity ago in a place that now seemed like a dream. When he had used The World for the first time, he had felt nauseous, as if time was a mighty ocean and when he stopped moving with it, he felt the force of the tide rocking him to his core. Except that this time, there was nothing around to cause it, he hadn't used Star Platinum to stop time since that fateful night and the only other person to possess that power lay scattered in dust across the Egyptian sands. There was no possible way for anything like that to happen, no matter how much every inch of his body screamed that something was horribly wrong.

Around him reality shifted, like water in a wobbling glass, gently resetting itself. To his madly darting eyes, however, the world continued to spin as usual.

Kakyoin was really late now.

He turned around and ran inside the school, letting the heavy wooden door slam behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

_But her friend is nowhere to be seen_  
_Now she walks through her sunken dream_  
_ To the seat with the clearest view_  
_ And she's hooked to the silver screen_

_\- David Bowie, Life on Mars. _

Growing up in Japan made Jotaro painfully aware of superstitions.

There was the typical silly stuff that children believed in like if you whistled in the middle of the night a ghost would come and get you or that hiding your thumb in a fist at the sight of a funeral hearse would prevent your parents from dying. His American mother had a whole other list of secret rules the world supposedly ran on, none of which he had bothered to apply since elementary school. Spilling sugar on a table just meant that he had a mess to clean up, not that misfortune was soon to follow and the sound of an owl did not make his skin crawl at all. He had what some of his teachers called a scientific mind, a phrase that always made him cringe a bit because in the end, it was not true. No matter how analytical he could get, there was always a small part of him that remembered that time when a broken mirror or the thirteenth day of a month landing on a Friday would make him wary and suspicious of everything around. The brain grew wiser but the inner child never forgot.

Star Platinum had no such filter. It awoke at a time when his belief in the supernatural had all but disappeared yet it still fed off the primeval part of his mind that felt uneasy in the dark and was disturbed by nightmares, despite understanding that they were not real; the same irrational part that remembered every ghost story and urban legend kids shared in whispers around the school. His stand had known something was wrong since the moment he laid eyes on the calendar that morning. It had tried to warn him and he hadn't listened.

He still did not want to. He would give anything in the world not to have to listen to his madly clattering heart any longer.

_Don't think about it. That's how curses work. _

"Kakyoin?"

He hated the panic that escaped his throat along with the name as it echoed in the empty hallway. His stomach churning at every step he took was one thing but hearing the fear in his own voice was giving it power. He ran up the crackling wooden stairs, stopped to catch his breath and called out again. Silence and the gentle creaking of floorboards were his only answer.

There was a white scarf on the floor.

It lay right outside Kakyoin's classroom, spread carelessly across the entrance as if it had slipped off its owner's neck when he was leaving. Jotaro bent down and picked it up, feeling the world flicker like a cheap television screen as his hand closed around it. His fingers, still stained from the vending machine, left large, messy prints all over the soft fabric. In the rapidly fading evening sun the oil had acquired a dark crimson tinge.

He could have punched himself in frustration as he felt the cold hand of dread grasp at his heart again. He was like a child in a dark room who couldn't help but imagine monsters and ended up scaring himself half to death. The situation was quickly getting ridiculous; there were a thousand things that could have stalled his friend. It was probably his turn to clean up the classroom or a really annoying classmate had talked his ear off or he had inexplicably decided that their meeting point was the back door of the school and not the front gate.

Or the damage from the injury he had sustained in Cairo had finally caught up with him. For all he knew, he could have collapsed on his way out and have been lying in a dark corner this whole time. Since he happened to be the last one to leave, nobody would have even noticed.

_Stop it. It's all in your head. It doesn't work if you don't let it. _

He threw the scarf over his shoulder and walked inside the classroom, his eyes sweeping over the neatly organized desks and chairs. Kakyoin's school bag was still here and he was sure that if he ran downstairs he would find his shoes still sitting in their usual place next to a collapsible green umbrella. He hadn't even tried to leave the school premises. Or maybe he was just about to before something happened.

He looked down at the oil-speckled paper clutched tightly in his hand and for a second, felt a faint metallic scent floating in the air.

_Only two minutes to leave the building… until the monster catches up with you._

_And then, the world begins anew._

His gaze drifted numbly through the window. Outside, the early autumn night had already claimed the empty schoolyard. A long row of street lamps spilled their yellow light in patches over the sidewalk. The walls around him grew long, distorted shadows that crept over the floorboards inching closer and closer to the half-open door.

In the dead silence that reigned in the classroom, he was vaguely aware of a muffled sound of footsteps.

"Jotaro?"

His own name sounded completely alien to him for a second before his tired brain registered it was Kakyoin's voice that had spoken it. He looked up and saw a pale face framed by long reddish hair reflected in the windowpane. Against the dark hallway in the background, it looked like it was lightly hovering over his shoulder.

"Have you been waiting here the whole time?"

A long-winded swear word barely made its way past Jotaro's lips. Inside him, Star Platinum rose up like a tidal wave, as if begging him to set it free and let it deal with his classmate in the only way it knew how. He turned around, wrestling his stand into submission and growled, "Where the hell have you been?"

Kakyoin's forehead creased into a frown once he noticed the lit street lamps outside. "Sorry, I had to drop by the nurse's office and the key wasn't in its usual place so I spent half an hour looking for it." He trailed off, his eyes narrowing in the yellow glow as they scanned Jotaro closely.

"Are you all right?"

They both asked the question at the same time; Kakyoin, in a calm polite tone and Jotaro in a breathless outburst he barely recognized as his own. For a while, they both stared at each other in awkward silence until Kakyoin nodded reassuringly and pointed at a little blue box in his hand.

"Yeah, I forgot to refill my prescription last week but I always keep an extra pack here at school. Technically, I'm not really allowed to but it's not like this stuff gets you high." He rattled the pillbox gently, giving Jotaro a worried look. "What's wrong? You look like you've just seen a ghost or something."

Jotaro did not reply, hoping the room's long shadows would prevent Kakyoin from seeing his mortified expression. Every little thought that had run through his head in the last half an hour came back with a vengeance and every one of them sounded absolutely ludicrous. No matter how he looked at it, signs and portents were for children to fret over. He should have known better since minute one but a tiny, treacherous voice had reminded him that Abdul believed in them and from that moment on, nothing could stop his thoughts from darkening. He had been through the same ordeal before, way back in January, whenever he glanced at Kakyoin's unconscious form in the ICU and the same venomous voice whispered that nobody could possibly survive what he had gone through. He shouldn't even have survived long enough to make it to the hospital, not the mention the long, complicated surgery. His face, during his eighteen-day-long coma was the face of death, cruelly biding its time until the inevitable outcome. When his eyes opened at last on the third day of February, Jotaro finally found it in him to close the door on that voice for good.

That is, until the end of November rolled around and the door cracked open again, letting every old fear slither through.

_I thought you were dead… because I ripped a piece of paper in half. _

No way were those words ever coming out of his mouth. He could barely believe he had come to think them in the first place.

Instead he shook his head and muttered, "You're late."

Kakyoin shot him an apologetic smile and slid his bag from under his desk. "Sorry, about that. Next time, just go ahead without me, I'll catch up."

Jotaro frowned, watching him sway where he stood. His friend had only started to walk without crutches three weeks ago and he still limped a bit when he got too tired. He felt Star Platinum tug at him and took a step forward, moving closer to Kakyoin, just in case. "Can you even run yet?"

Kakyoin shrugged and threw his bag over his shoulder, "I can walk really fast, it's usually enough." His fingers brushed lightly against Jotaro's neck as he yanked away the white scarf hanging from it. "Come on, let's get out of here. I don't want to miss the last train home"

Jotaro nodded in silence and followed him outside. The queasy sinking sensation that had bothered him the entire day was finally settling down and for a second, he wondered if he had just imagined the flickering world and the ebb and flow of time. As if in response to his sudden doubt, his stand shrunk and skulked away, retreating into a place where he could never follow. He let it be for now and picked up the pace. The sooner they left the school behind, the sooner he could forget this had ever happened.

They were about to walk through the front gate before Kakyoin tapped him on the shoulder.

"I think you dropped something going down the stairs." He dug into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled, stained paper. "What's this, a betting ticket?"

Jotaro stared down at his own messy handwriting. Under the bright light of the street lamp right above them, the mangled IOU looked as inoffensive as it could. The dark crimson tinge had vanished from the stains and the pungent metallic smell of blood was gone too, replaced by the usual stink of machine oil. His senses must have deceived him back there and his growing paranoia had done the rest.

It didn't matter. He never wanted to see the wretched thing again.

He took the paper from Kakyoin's outstretched hand, threw one last look at the name signed at the bottom and chucked it down a drain hole. It bounced off the pavement once, slid between the grates and disappeared in the gurgling darkness below.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "It's expired."


End file.
